Some Hi! this
is my Gloster Meteor F.Mk-IV in 1/48 scale.
History:
After WWII
Great Britain was indebted with Argentina for delivery of goodies during
that period, but the UK was unable to pay for food and raw material with
currency, so instead offered manufactured products in lieu. Argentina
recived 15 Lancaster, 30 Lincolns and 100 Meteors F.Mk IV. This way
Argentina became the first Latina-american country whit this kind of
advanced equipment. No other country in the region had jet fighters in
their armies. Almost all the planes were delivered between May and
September 1948, in two groups: 50 were es R.A.F. planes and the other half
were specially built by Gloster in their facility at Moreton, Valence.
In Argentina,
from 1947 to 1948, the planes were deployed in Ezeiza airport, and from
1948 to 1950 in DAM Tandil, to be finally transferred to BAM Moron,
province of Buenos Aires, where they served until the end of their
operational life in December 29 1970.
The
Kit:
This kit is
from an Argentiean manufacturer, and as it is with many limited run kits,
it shows great detail, but has a terrible fit. One thing: the resin was
hard but very, very, very brittle. I consider myself a careful modeler, but
I broke almost all the kit parts in one way or another. But
lucky me, a few weeks ago I accidentally broke a 1/48 Tamiya Meteor
that I built a few years ago, so I "cannibalized" some parts
from this kit.
Click on
images below to see larger images
I
built it mostly out of the box, with only a few details added from
scratch. I took a great deal of heavy work and tons of putty to produce an
acceptable result, and some panels were lost during the sanding process,
but after all this work and careful polishing the models was ready to
paint.
I usually paint NMF with
Alclad II, but I run out of it, and it is very hard to fin d in my country.
So I decied to try the one metallic paint that I had in my desk: Citadelīs
Mithril silver... the result was great!!! The shine is similar to the
Alclad, but with some advantages. it is an acrylic, is cheap, it doesnīt
need an undercoat and takes masking tape without any damage. I will use
this paint in the future.
Once the metallic paint
dried I masked and painted the yellow band in the fuselage, the black matt
antiglare panel and the white area in the vertical stabilizer.
Finally it was time for the
decals: the kit supplies a great decal sheet made by Aztec, with four
scheme option. I picked the one that covers F.IV C-084, Grupo 2 de
Caza-bombardeos, BAM Moron Buenos Aires 1961.
The decals are thin and
easy to apply, but they donīt take Micro-sol very well. I learned this
the hard way.
The final assembly involved
gluing the smaller items, such as the Pitot tube, gear doors, antennas,
etc.
Iīm very happy with the
results I finally achived with this kit.
I know is not perfect, but it is
a fine addition to my collection of Argentinean aircraft.
Jeremias
|
|